One wonders why Oracle, a predominantly software company, wants to buy a hardware vendor like Sun

While the IT industry is known for speed, it rarely makes you gasp. The last time it shockedu00a0 me was in 1998, when I stood with my mouth open like a goldfish at a counter in Bangalore's old airport when the exasperated assistant behind the counter asked me for the Nth time if I needed a seat on the window or the aisle. For the life of me I couldn't respond, for before me was a business dally with big bold words that said that Compaq had bought Digital. The deal went bad and Compaq's then-CEO Eckhard Pfeiffer, who engineered the merger, was eased out in 1999 in a coup led by board chairman Ben Rosen and replaced by Michael Capellas.